• multichannel sound •live sound-processing •audio/video synthesis
1. Audio Chandelier multichannel sound performances and installations:
Audio Chandelier is a series multi-channel sound pieces created since 2010, for live performances, fixed-media and generative sound installations. Field recordings are “pixelated” into individual grains of sound, and dispersed to 16+ speakers. Granular synthesis techniques alter each sound pixel, illuminating and refracting moments in time into audio landscapes. These pieces have been, in performance, with up to 56 speakers (CCRMA/Stanford), for laptop orchestra, smartphones, and a 2021 generative sound sculpture/installation, Audio Chandelier: Polyélaios (Governors Island NY) http://audiochandelier.com/ and Audio Chandelier: Passeri, a multichannel audio/video installation and meditation on bird songs, and migration patterns created in residence and exhibited by APO-33, Nantes France July/August 2023.
The video below outlines the work in the Audio Chandelier series, with sound examples, information and footage from several Audio Chandelier pieces. as well as technical explanations and screenshots of my Audio Chandelier Max software which serves as my ersatz score and/or instrument.
Please also view the additional video below video excerpt of a stereo rendering of Audio Chandelier: Latitudes, was created for a performance in the 32 speakers dome of SAT Satosphère Montreal (2017) as seen in the images.
2. Live Sound Processing duo projects:
My longest running project is to do live sound-processing of acoustic musicians as I play and interact with them. Using computer programs I write since 1994 in the Max programming environment, I control the effects processing, making real-time choices informed by musical/electroacoustic aesthetics, room acoustics, and psychoacoustics. The software I write is heavily embedded with compositional decisions made for each project. It functions both as my score, and an electronic instrument that I play, with tight rhythmic, harmonic and algorithmic control over the parameters. My released duo recordings are emblematic of this work. Below are several short excerpts from some of these duo recordings : with Ras Moshe Burnett (tenor sax) on Fusebox (Gold Bolus 2021), Edith Lettner (alto sax) on We Q and finally Gordon Beeferman (piano) on Pulsing Dot (Clang 2017). This work is central to my proposed project to write/create music for my duo partners in a larger group.
All electronic sounds are created in real-time from the sound of the instruments or my voice. (See my articles this work: https://tinyurl.com/dln2022NMB).
3. Audio/Video Synthesis
At a residency at Signal Culture in 2016, I made my first experiments with analog synthesis and video synthesizers (MVIP by Dave Jones) as well as the Wobbulator created after Nam June Paik’s creation.
The result was my 3-channel video “AWOL_socket”, which I created using audio and video feedback and the Wobbulator to control the video synthesizer, as well as facial movements, computer vision, motion tracking to control the synthesizers which controlled the video. This video was exhibited at “Women on Making” show at WhiteBox Gallery in New York October 3-23, 2022.
https://dafna.info/women-on-making-at-whitebox-gallery-oct-8-23/ https://whiteboxnyc.org/2022/exhibitions/making/
Also exhibited was another video “Blaafarvevaerket” which I created with sound to video synthesis, which was later given an audio score in collaboration with Hans Tammen. For more information about this and other video work of mine see https://dafna.info/dafna-naphtali-video-pieces/.